hat was a beautiful text you showed me last night, I
thought of it all day, and I'll try to believe that good will come out
of it. I am sure you are very good to let me love the children! I'm
certain sure Miss Salome knows that I'm in trouble, for she never fails
to run and kiss me the minute she comes in sight; and she'll sit so
quiet in my lap, the little dear, and look at me as much as to say,
'Charlotte, I wish I could comfort you.' But it was all my own fault,
ma'am, and I think I could feel as if I was punished right, so I knew
poor Tom was happy.'

'Alas!' thought Isabel, after hearing Charlotte's reminiscences; 'how
close I have lived to a world of which I was in utter ignorance! How
little did we guess that, by the careless ease and inattention of our
household, we were carrying about a firebrand, endangering not only
poor Walter, but doing fearful harm wherever we went!'

CHAPTER XXI.

STEPPING WESTWARD.

On Darien's sands and deadly dew.
Rokeby.

Enterprise and speed both alike directed Fitzjocelyn's course across
the Isthmus of Panama, which in 1853 had newly become practicable for
adventurous travellers. A canal conducted him as far as Cruces, after
which he had to push on through wild forest and swamp, under the escort
of the muleteers who took charge of the various travellers who had
arrived by the same packet.

It was a very novel and amusing journey, even in the very discomforts
and the strange characters with whom he was thrown, and more
discontented travellers used to declare that Don Luis, as he told the
muleteers to call him, always seemed to have the best success with the
surly hotel-keepers, though when he resigned his acquisitions to any
resolute grumbler, it used to be discovered that he had been putting up
with the worst share.

A place called Guallaval seemed to be the most squalid and forlorn of
all the stations--outside, an atmosphere of mosquitoes; inside, an
atmosphere of brandy and smoke, the master an ague-stricken Yankee, who
sat with his bare feet high against the wall, and only deigned to jerk
with his head to show in what quarter was the drink and food, and to
'guess that strangers must sleep on the ground, for first-comers had
all the beds'--hammocks slung up in a barn, or unwholesome cupboards in
the wall.

At the dirty board sat several of the party first arrived, washing down
tough, stringy beef with brandy. Louis was about to t